John Lewis by David Greenberg

Author:David Greenberg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2024-10-08T00:00:00+00:00

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In any case, there were other issues. Lewis and Bond held similar positions on most political matters, but they were not identical. Although both men had ties to Atlanta’s Jewish community, Bond had on occasion run afoul of Jewish opinion. Though he affirmed Israel’s right to nationhood, he had at times described himself as “anti-Zionist”—a term that most Jews equated with enmity toward the Jewish state. At other times, he minimized the anti-Semitism in Black radical circles. Some of Bond’s Jewish friends were taken aback by his ignorance of the issues, such as not knowing that Arab citizens voted in Israeli elections. Once, when a local American Jewish Committee chapter invited Bond to speak about Israel, he showed up at the synagogue with some swaggering militant types, turning what had been meant as a conciliatory gesture into a divisive one.23

Lewis, by contrast, always showed heartfelt sympathy for the concerns of Atlanta’s Jews. He helped set up a program for Black and Jewish teens where each group would listen to and learn about the other’s experiences. “We’d split into groups, Black and Jewish, and anonymously write down questions for the other group,” said Sherry Frank, who was involved. “Sometimes it would be tense—on Israel, South Africa, Jesse Jackson.” Blacks might ask Jews why they talked so much about the Holocaust; Jews might ask Blacks if they felt they benefited unfairly from affirmative action. The process bred mutual understanding. Lewis liked the exercise because it promoted the kind of community he remembered from Nashville. “John was always there,” Frank said. “Sometimes he’d come in a tuxedo because he’d been speaking at a gay rights dinner. Sometimes he’d come in jeans because he was coming from home. I’d tell him he should go home to Lillian, but he’d stay.”24

Lewis also maintained special ties to the gay and lesbian community. In the mid-1980s, the cause of equal rights for gays and lesbians was still highly controversial, and even some liberals kept their distance. For Gay Pride Month, in June, Andrew Young would issue a generic statement on behalf of civil rights for all. But Lewis “greeted the gay lobby more enthusiastically,” the Journal-Constitution reported. “It isn’t easy to be gay, particularly in the South,” Lewis said to a Gay Pride gathering.25

The churches, too, especially Black churches, steered clear of gay rights. Relatively few Black men and women were out of the closet. According to Dave Hayward, a white gay activist and journalist, most visible movement leaders at the time were white. “A very good friend running for the Atlanta City Council told me that he went to a party, and it was basically Black gay men. He said, ‘Dave, I was just totally astonished. All these guys they have wives and daughters and girlfriends, and they’re all on the down-low’ ”—a phrase referring to the secretive lives of Black gay or bisexual men.26

Lewis never worried that his outspokenness on the issue would hurt him with churchgoing voters, Black or white. “He wanted people

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